What Professional Can I Trust?

Asked by zographoula on 2018-08-2 with 1 answer:

Hello everybody, I’m a 25 year old female from Greece. I suffer from borderline personality disorder, cannabis abuse disorder, Aspergers syndrome and ADHD (some psychiatrists believe I also have bipolar disorder). When I was a teenager I also had eating disorders.

I take psychiatric medication (an antipsychotic and a mood stabilizer) from when I was 17 y.o. and I recently started going to a psychotherapist for therapy (and I totally love therapy!). I’ve been hospitalized in mental hospitals for 8 times and 1 time I went to a rehab for drug abuse (cannabis, alcohol, benzodiazepines, MDMA and cocaine – now I smoke only weed but I do it daily). I’ve tried to commit suicide 5 times and I cut myself too. I was bullied (mentally and physically) constantly in elementary school for 6 years because of my strange behavior.

Here’s my problem: I have visited many doctors. All doctors say that I’m borderline but the half of them, they also believe that I have bipolar disorder. I don’t think I have it. I just don’t have the symptoms. For example, when they say I’m manic, I don’t have changes in my energy (I sleep 12 hours! 12 hours for a manic person? really?), I’m never hypersexual, I’m never grandiose, I’m never euphoric and of course I don’t have the “proper” duration for bipolar mood swings (my mood changes within a few minutes or hours, they don’t last for days/weeks/months).

I’m very impulsive, moody, self-destructive, aggressive and I easily get angry and that’s why I got the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I talked about this to these psychiatrists and they said I don’t have the typical clinical picture of a bipolar person but I still have it. And that’s why they don’t prescribe medication for my ADHD, they think it can make me go manic. But, like I said, they don’t agree all of the doctors with that diagnosis and one of them asked me If I wanted to take stimulant medication and I said “Ill think about it.” Who can I trust? Thank you very much for your answer!

What a complicated collection of diagnoses. I can’t tell you whether or not you have bipolar disorder. I can tell you that smoking marijuana every day is not helpful to any of your problems and may be making things worse. Especially since you are taking medication, it is essential that you talk to your prescriber about it to determine if the weed is interacting in any negative way with your medicine.

Besides the drug use, I think the borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis impacts everything else — even your concerns about who to trust. For that reason, if you were seeing me, I’d be working on the borderline diagnosis first. The most researched treatment for BPD is Dialectical Behavior Therapy. I encourage you to research it and to look for a therapist in your area who has expertise in that technique. It will provide you with practical tools for managing and regulating the emotional responses that often cause you to hurt yourself or to be confused about who to trust in relationships.

I wish you well. Dr. Marie

What Professional Can I Trust?

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Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker

Dr. Marie is licensed as both a psychologist and marriage and family counselor. She specializes in couples and family therapy and parent education. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

APA Reference Hartwell-Walker, D. (2018). What Professional Can I Trust?. Psych Central.
Retrieved on September 15, 2019, from https://psychcentral.com/ask-the-therapist/2018/08/03/what-professional-can-i-trust/

Last updated: 2 Aug 2018Last reviewed: By a member of our scientific advisory board on 2 Aug 2018Published on Psych Central.com. All rights reserved.